Posted on 03/23/2007 12:31:26 AM PDT by Mia T
Hillary: The Big Sister We Can Do Without
by Steve Chapman
Posted 03/22/2007 ET
Everyone knows Hillary Rodham Clinton, and everyone has a different reaction to her. Some find her as irritating as fingernails on a chalkboard. Some find that she makes their skin crawl. Some run screaming from the room. And some want to drink a gallon of rat poison while lying across a railroad track.
The conventional wisdom is that the former first lady will be a formidable presidential candidate because she has lots of money, veteran campaign aides, a shrewd political sense and a close connection to a president beloved by Democrats. But those may be nothing next to a couple of fairly major factors operating against her.
The first is that many people in both parties see her as ideologically repellent. Conservatives think she's an arrogant busybody with an addiction to big government. The left regards her as a cynical trimmer who can't admit when she's wrong.
The second is that many people, again in both parties, just can't stand her. You want a uniter, not a divider? Hillary has a way of uniting people who ordinarily would be pelting each other with eggs.
That explains the appeal of the new YouTube ad, modeled on Apple's famous "1984" Super Bowl commercial, which portrays her as a blandly sinister Big Sister on a giant screen, uttering phony platitudes to an army of robotic slaves. It ends happily when a blonde female athlete sprints in and hurls a sledgehammer at the screen, obliterating the image.
Though the ad included a plug for Barack Obama (who denies any involvement), it would draw equal ovations if it were shown at a meeting of MoveOn.org or The Heritage Foundation. Which raises the question: If the right regards her as a dangerous leftist and the left regards her as an unprincipled accomplice in the Iraq disaster, who really likes her?
It's not as though she warms the hearts of moderates everywhere. Her husband was a master of triangulating between the two poles. But Hillary's efforts to place herself in the sensible center suggest naked opportunism, not hardheaded practicality.
The candidate we all know is the one portrayed by Amy Poehler in the "Saturday Night Live" skit who, when asked about her original position on Iraq, replied with a condescending smile, "I think most Democrats know me. They understand that my support for the war was always insincere."
Any candidate can suffer reputational damage during the course of a bitterly fought election. But Hillary rouses an exceptional amount of dislike even before we've been reminded of her flaws.
In a recent USA Today/Gallup poll, only 19 percent of those surveyed had an unfavorable opinion of Barack Obama. Even the abrasive Rudolph Giuliani had only a 22 percent unfavorable score. But 40 percent had an unfavorable opinion of her.
A December poll found 47 percent of Americans would not even consider voting for Hillary. Karlyn Bowman, a polling expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and author of a forthcoming report on attitudes about Hillary, says she can't remember a major party presidential candidate whose negative rating was so high at the start of a campaign.
Conservatives, of course, remember her angry response when her husband was accused of having sex with Monica Lewinsky -- which she dismissed as a smear from a "vast, right-wing conspiracy." It turned out her enemies were telling the truth and she was not.
But even many Democrats find her impossible to take. A recent online poll by The Nation, a leftist magazine, asked readers to name her "greatest weakness." Among the choices it offered, besides her refusal to apologize for supporting the Iraq war resolution, were "her rigid, poll-driven style" and "her tendency to stomp all over her critics."
Much of the support she has comes from people who wish her husband could serve a third term. But weak nostalgia is a poor campaign theme. And Hillary fails on one of the most basic tests: personality.
This is someone, after all, who will be in our living rooms every night for at least four years. Looking back on recent elections, the candidate who wins is usually the more likeable one -- Bush over Gore, Clinton over Dole, Bush over Dukakis, Reagan over Carter. Polls indicate that the aversion to Hillary is less about her politics than about her as a person, and overcoming that sentiment will not be easy.
As the campaign proceeds, some people will be hoping for her to succeed. But I'm betting a lot more will be rooting for the blonde with the sledgehammer.
Mr. Chapman is a columnist and editorial writer for the Chicago Tribune.
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HILLARY!
But as opposed to hillary-on-stage, Al thereon has a saving grace: He doesn't try to appear human. To the contrary, Al Gore embraces his humanoid essence. (In fairness to missus clinton, 'inhuman' is a measurably less salable descriptor than 'humanoid.')
To better understand why this is such an advantage for Mr. Gore, simply consider missus clinton's recent 'conversation' (with herself).
It was risible. Unintentional theater of the absurd: A chintzed-and-powdered villain, a soulless, angry, arrogant scold, oozing cloying, saccharine-coated evil, pulsating to the metronomic swing of stubby appendages--claws too short to grab its prey.
(Gesticulation is a dud's only sign of life... and then only if she has a speech coach to prod her.)
A precarious 20th-century conceit, the hillary! construct totters on a crumbling foundation of clinton lies, abuses and betrayals.
It should have been no surprise that David Geffen's comments to Maureen Dowd would so easily topple it.
But to the average clinton lackey, it apparently was.
A barrage of polls are shooting down the endless post-Geffen-imbroglio clinton-agitprop chatter that had called hillary clinton and her machine the hands-down winner.
According to the latest Zogby Poll, Barack Obama is gaining fast on missus clinton. The Quinnipiac University Poll released today reports that Giuliani has widened his lead over missus clinton in New Jersey (50-41).
But it is this week's Keystone Poll that foreshadows the final outcome. Rudy demolishes clinton in blue Pe-Ay (53-37). But more significantly, hillary clinton's favorable/unfavorable rating is a dismal 32/46. (The other candidates have net positive favorable ratings.)
We have argued elsewhere that the only way missus clinton can win elections is to run virtually unopposed, and then only if she remains immobil, hidden, mute, a prisoner of her own ineptitude, repulsiveness and criminality.
But of the three, it is missus clinton's repulsiveness--her ugliness--that will do her in.
The voters routinely ignore ineptitude, forgive criminality, but they never abide ugliness. Never.
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I liked this post much more than usual. The formatting was a lot easier for me to read. OK, I'm distracted by shiny things - lol!
Seriously, the large body of text in an easy to read font made it much easier to get through. The group of graphics at the bottom made it easier to get started rather than wait for the delay for my screen to load the text without "tossing" it all over the screen while the graphics loaded.
If you don't mind the feedback, this made the whole post much easier to read and more enjoyable.
Thanks! : )
For your efforts in exposing Missus Clinton's ugliness, thank you.
BTTT
Good morning and good post (as usual).
:)
Thanks again Mia,
Ya gotta have loved the 1984 web film about Mrs. Clinton.
And the only thing I found wrong is that the lady with the hammer didn't hit her for real.
bump
bttt
bump
Good Morning bump for a great job, Mia.
Having just finished an article on the fund raising she's about right now, the need to stop her in the primaries seems so much more urgent.
....Seems like that 'Anti-Hillary 1984 Video' wasn't as effective as first thought - could it be that a strange sympathy has been created for Herself, the Cold and Joyless?
Judging from the psychology of most of the supporters of the evil duo from Arkansas, that may be a fair assessment. Basically, those folk are FRIGHTENED of the 'Magic Negro'. The 'Magic Negro', being a success of sorts, destroys their sense of guilt.
Barack is just TOO good, in their eyes. Or maybe just not black enough.
I think it was effective due to the spin being applied that it didn't damage.
Just think of it this way. The untouchable has her image shattered, and the MSM was sneak attacked on this.
No chance for scripting, Friday announcements, talking heads . Pure sinking of the ship with no return shot possible.
All this it's no big thing indicates it did hit home..........
Also, if O Wanna B , or any of his team knew about it in advance I'd be shaking in my boots if I were Hill's squad.
They are seeing E warfare in the modern world, not the old print & screaming head trash version.............
Philip de Vellis, now famed/exposed "new media" creator of the youtube video...NO MENTION.
Gil Kaufman's MTV News piece citing de Vellis and others here...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1805416/posts
...NO MENTION.
and Steve Chapman's Human Events piece at the top of this thread...NO MENTION...
...of Hillary, the co-rapist of an innocent woman, as part of the rationale for her negativity.
Only 1 INDIVIDUAL stands out as a voice of reason among propagandists.
Thank you Mia T.
My expectations may have been too high - I was looking forward to 100% defection from support of Herself, the Cold and Joyless, and obviously, that didn't happen.
We should be glad for any softening in the fanatical embrace of the venomous viper of a spouse to the "Shan" (previously known as the "Former Occupant of the Oval Office, 1993-2001"). If those hearts and minds may be changed even a little bit, there is always the possibility that they could be changed even more in the future.
Or not.
Good morning, Mia ................. FRegards
Thank GOD you are a very important part of the VRWC.....
The secret behind Mia T's prolific creative output: no sleep!
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